This is apparently Greece’s new tactics towards Turkey: “calling names.” After Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras called Recep Tayyip Erdogan “sultan,” his coalition government partner, Panos Kammenos said the Turkish President “a madman.”
ANEL leader and Defense Minister, Panos Kammenos, pulled the trigger of the escalation in the bilateral issues and claimed “the two Greek soldiers can remain in Turkish prison up to 15 years.” He attributed his ‘prediction’ to the state of mind of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
“Nobody knows [what can happen] when dealing with a madman and a country where nothing is valid! Did you hear what he said yesterday about Netanyahu? The Turkish operation with regards to the Greek soldiers was pre-planned,” Kammenos said.
- Murphy’s Law: The s0-called Turkish plot to arrest the Greek soldiers circulated in Greek media in the first days of the arrest on March 1st. According to the scenario, the soldiers were lurked to Turkish territory through fake foot prints in the snow which were perceived as belonging to illegal migrants. That was the plan from the very beginning in order to arrest Greek soldiers and put pressure on Athens for the extradition of the Turkish servicemen. Ankara had initially rejected exchange of the soldiers, but now it seems that the whole issue turns for Greece into a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy and Murphy’s Law.
Panos Kammenos stressed that “such incidents are normally resolved very soon. We activated all channels of communications, they rejected all, it was clear where the incident was leading to.”
To a question whether there is a communication channel now, Kammenos replied “What communications channel? Erdogan goes public and swears at the US and Netanyahu. The man has gone completely mad. What can one communicate? Is Erdogan a reliable interlocutor?”
On Sunday, the office of Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras issued a statement which it called Erdsogan “Sultan”.
Earlier today, Erdogan said “Turkey may hit targets outside its borders at any time” and jumped in a military uniform.
Then a Turkish daily wrote that “Greeks saw him in uniform and got scared!” – even if Erdogan threatened with operation in Syria and Iraq….
